Voter registration deadline nears

Published 1:00 pm, Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Texans are being reminded the deadline is approaching to register to vote in the Nov. 2 general election.

The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 4.

"Registering to vote is easy," Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade said. "The voter registration application only has nine questions, including one which asks for your name."

Voter registration applications are available online at the secretary of state's Web site, www.VOTEXAS.org, or at county elections offices, and many post offices and libraries.

To register to vote in Texas, you must:

•Be a U.S. citizen;

•Be a resident of the county;

•Be at least 17 years and 10 months old (You must be 18 years old by Election Day.)

•Not be a convicted felon (unless your sentence is completed, including any probation and parole); and

•Not be declared mentally incapacitated by a court of law.

If a person moves or changes their name after they are registered, they must notify the local voter registrar in their home county of the new information. Texans can check their registration status at VOTEXAS.org.

To complete a voter registration application, a person must provide a Texas driver license number or Texas personal I.D. number issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety. If a person has neither of those numbers, the applicant is asked to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number. The number submitted by the applicant is verified before a voter registration certificate is issued.

If none of the required numbers are provided on the application, the person can still be registered, but they must show a proper form of identification at the polling location before they can receive a ballot.

Meanwhile, requests for an application to vote by mail are available from county clerk's offices.

According to Hale County Clerk Latrice Kemp, qualified applicants must be 65 or older, disabled, confined in jail without a felony conviction or expected to be absent from the county on Election Day with your ballot being mailed to an address outside of the county.

Deadline is Oct. 26.

Call 291-5261 with questions.

Early voting is Oct. 18-29 in the Hale County Courthouse basement and at city halls in Hale Center, Abernathy and Petersburg.

(Contact Kevin Lewis at 806-296-1353 or kwlewis@hearstnp.com. Follow him on Facebook.)